Overnight peoples (aka. Who's up?)

[Corey]

Originally Posted by tommymac

i would love to have something like that. If I have the right people here I can move things prety quickly, but here were not a typical fast track either. We work up a lot of stuff over here due to sheer volume ( our census is about 70k a year) we actualy admit about 10 to 20 perecnt of our fast track patients as well (we work up a lot of appys, cholecystitis and other abdominal pains and gyn stuff) Plus on th eovernights I am flying solo so I get a few procedures to do and it just bogs down.

Tom

Damn. We've got a nice system in place that filters out a good amount of shit that would normally clog up the ER. If the triage nurse determines it's an urgent care situation and not an emergency, they're sent back for a further screening with a PA or a Doctor for a medical screening by a qualified medical practitioner (QMP, hence QMP process). The PA/Dr gives the final decision on whether it's an urgent care situation or if it qualifies as an emergency. If it's urgent care, the patient is given two options: pay $150 if they're uninsured (or their copay if they're insured) for treatment or go home and not get charged. I'd say 9 out of 10 times they're just happy to hear they're not dying and that they can leave with some treatment advice (take some tylenol, rest, put heat on it, put ice on it, etc) and not have to pay a dime. If they do decide to stay for treatment, and since it's already been determined that it's an urgent care situation, the treatment is typically Motrin and a script. Either way, they're outta the ER quick and not taking up a room with some phantom pain. The process cuts out people just wanting to know it's not serious, bums looking for pain meds, and retards trying to abuse the system because their tummy hurts and they want a doctors note to get outta work because they're actually just hungover.